


hopes as high as a kite

by hudders-and-hiddles (LeslieWrites)



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Coming Out, Festivals, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, New Year's Eve, POV Patrick Brewer, Small Towns, Traditions, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:15:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27765832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeslieWrites/pseuds/hudders-and-hiddles
Summary: When Patrick goes home for the holidays to come out to his parents, he discovers it’s harder to do than he had expected.A story about leaving things behind, letting go, and learning to fly.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 185
Kudos: 432
Collections: Schitt's Creek: Frozen Over (2020)





	hopes as high as a kite

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [SCFrozenOver2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SCFrozenOver2020) collection. 



_Let's watch the old year die  
With a fond goodbye  
And our hopes as high as a kite  
How can our love go wrong  
If we start the new year right?_

❄️ **December 23** ❄️

Even with the afternoon sun steady and bright in the clear azure sky, the holiday lights are on, glowing merrily in the frosted branches of the trees on the town square, a festive canopy stretched above the snowy ground. There’s the start of a bonfire being built at the center of the square, where in a few days the Burning Festival will sprawl out around it, down the surrounding streets where every shop and restaurant is decorated with pine boughs and bows and a wreath on the doors, and signs hang from street lamps, wishing every passerby a _Happy New Year_. 

It’s a winter fantasy come to life, and to Patrick it means one thing: home. 

He’s home, and as he drives past the square on his way to his parents’ house, Evergreen Hollow looks the same as it always does. 

That’s usually a comfort, to know that he can come back and enjoy all the same things he always has—eat at the same restaurants, see the same neighbors and old family friends—but this year there’s an ache, too, where before there’s only been easy warmth. He loves this town and all it’s given him, but this year it’s bittersweet being back here where nothing ever really changes.

Because this year, Patrick has.

❄️❄️❄️

_Mom. Dad. I’m gay._

Patrick sets down his fork and clears his throat, his parents pausing with their own utensils halfway to their mouths as they realize there’s something he intends to say. He tries to keep his face as neutral as possible, to keep his hands still where he rests them in his lap, but he must not manage it as well as he hopes; his parents share a look between them and then turn two warm but shrewd gazes back his direction, a curious little wrinkle carved between his mother’s brows. 

_Mom. Dad. I’m gay._

It’s what he’s come home to say, but now that he’s here with their expectant, patient faces in front of him, it feels a little like he’s back in eighth grade, standing alone on the stage in the school auditorium, sweating under the heat of the spotlight. Only this time, there is no script for him to follow. He knows his own line—it’s only four words after all—but there are no prescribed reactions here, no ebb and flow of dialogue he can practice again and again until he knows the beats of the scene as well as those of his own heart.

The silence grows between them, vast as a gulf, and the looks on his parents’ faces twist from curiosity to concern the longer he sits here saying nothing. He can do this, just like he practiced. He has to.

_Mom. Dad. I’m gay._

But when he opens his mouth to begin, the only sound that comes out is the rusty click of his jaw opening and then closing again.

“Honey, what is it?” His mother looks at him with the same worry she had eight months ago, the last time he’d left Rachel behind in their apartment and turned up on his parents’ doorstep in the middle of the night. He’d cried in her arms then, the hardest he’s cried since he’d broken his arm falling through the spiderweb on the school playground when he was six, and she’d held him just as tight. He wonders if she’ll still hug him that way now, once she knows who he really is. 

It had taken running away to Schitt’s Creek for him to be able to find the truth he’s been hiding from himself for years, whispering it aloud in the safety of his rented bedroom at Ray’s. But it’s one thing to say the words to yourself in the dark; it’s quite another to sit in the dining room of your childhood home and tell your parents that there’s a huge part of you they don’t even know.

“Patrick?” His father’s expression is serious but open, the kind of look that invites grave confidences, and Patrick can’t help but worry that this might be the last time that look is turned his way. 

_Mom. Day. I’m gay._

He just has to say it. Say something.

The soft corner of the paper napkin in his lap folds and unfolds easily beneath his fingers where he tries to give them something to do other than shake. “I, um, I wanted to— Well. I came home because…”

The fear is illogical, he knows, because he also knows, deep down, that his parents are good, kind, loving people. They’ve never said anything or done anything to give him any real reason to think that they won’t be accepting of this, of him, but the problem is that logic doesn’t overpower fear. It’s still there clawing its way up into his throat, talons hooking deep into the muscle, clinging, so that he can’t simply swallow it back down.

Because what if.

What if they see him differently or treat him differently once they know? There’s no way to know for sure that they’ll react well, that everything will be the same, and Patrick’s mind has played out every horrible, even if unlikely, possibility in increasingly vivid detail over the last few weeks since he’d decided to make this trip home. 

What if they stop calling, stop texting, stop inviting him home to visit? What if they tell him it’s probably better if he doesn’t attend the annual Brewer barbecue next summer because it’ll be easier than having to explain to the rest of his family that little Patch ran away and decided he likes boys now? What if they kick him out of the house, ask the church to pray for him? What if they run into Mikey or Nathan in the grocery store one Saturday morning and start to question all those sleepovers they’d had as kids, camped out together in a tent in the backyard? 

What if they get curious about his business partnership with David? They were already concerned enough about his decision to go into business with a man he’d just met, and so far from home, too. They might start to wonder if his role at Rose Apothecary goes far beyond business; it’s both so far from the truth and so close to it that his stomach turns at the thought.

He can’t do this.

He can’t.

“I’m sorry,” he says instead. “For not being in touch as much as you’d like, these last few months.” It’s not a lie; he owes them the apology as much as the explanation behind it. He can at least do this half now, and maybe tomorrow he can find the courage to try again to give them the rest. Looking up, he meets their gazes head on, pulls himself up tall the way they taught him to, and forges onward. “Schitt’s Creek has been good for me. I— I’ve learned a lot about myself, and I’m glad to be where I am now.” Their faces soften at the same time, and he chastises himself once again for shutting them out while he started over. But there’s no going back, so all he can do is let this apology carry him forward. “But I don’t want you to think that I was running away from you or something. And I’m sorry if I made you feel like I was by… not calling or texting very much. But I’m gonna try to be better about that.” He chuckles a little, trying to lighten the mood a bit. “Maybe that’s what I’ll burn at the festival.”

A small smile flashes across his mother’s face, but the wrinkle between her brows only deepens. 

“But yeah, I just wanted you to know that. And— And I’ve missed you. Both of you. So thank you for, you know, letting me stay here for Christmas and all.”

His dad shakes his head. “This is your home. You know you’re always welcome here.”

“Always,” his mom echoes, reaching a hand across the table. He takes it, and she squeezes it hard, the way she used to when she’d lie down beside him after he’d woken up from a nightmare. Like she knows. Like she can see this thing that’s eating him up inside, maybe not the precise shape and color of it but its shadow nevertheless.

It takes three deep breaths for him to will away the tears threatening to form. “Thank you.”

She watches him carefully for a few seconds more, long enough that he wonders if she’ll ask. He almost wishes she would so he’d have nowhere left to hide. But instead she gives his hand another squeeze and lets go, picking up her fork again as she launches into a long story about his cousin Koda’s new baby.

❄️ **December 29** ❄️

It’s late by the time Patrick crawls into bed, exhausted from a day spent helping with projects around the house and yet another evening spent beating himself up over his inability to do what he’d come here to do. He’s been home almost a whole week now and still hasn’t managed to tell his parents. Today’s token attempt had come while he helped his dad replace the brackets on a shelf that had fallen in the garage. But when his father had asked if he’d spoken to Rachel lately, Patrick had panicked and chickened out once again.

Throwing his towel into the bathroom hamper, he pulls on a clean pair of boxer briefs, flips off the lights, and slips beneath the sheets. The room around him still looks the way he’d left it when he’d headed off to college—Jays poster on the back of the door, trophies propped up on neat stacks of books on the shelves above his desk. It used to be comforting, being back here, surrounded by all these reminders of home. This is the place where he’d learned to drive his first car, a tiny, green hatchback with a sticky clutch, in the big empty lot behind his Uncle Henry’s house. This is where he’d first spied a mahogany Rogue in the window of Cooper’s Music Shop and saved his weekly allowance for six months to be able to buy it. This is where he’d had his first kiss, with Rachel at a picnic table in front of Polly’s Ice, her lips cold and sweet like the chocolate soft serve she’d been eating. 

They’re good memories, the ones that he made here in Evergreen Hollow, but the problem is that to everyone else they aren’t just memories. They’re expectations. They’re a written outline of the person they all still expect him to be.

There’s something about going home that’s like using a time machine, sending yourself back through the years. You go back, and you get… stuck. Trapped in the body of the person you were back then. Patrick runs into old friends at the grocery store, and they still greet him as if it hasn’t been three years since they last spoke. He goes out in the evening, and though he doesn’t really have a curfew, his parents still expect him home by eleven, waiting up to greet him with anxious faces if he’s not back on time. At Christmas, his Aunt Diane still expects him to fetch her another glass of wine when she demands it and he still has to eat at the kids table with all his cousins and his grandfather still hands him a ten dollar bill like it’s got the power to buy him the world. To all of them he’s still the same little Patch they’ve always known.

But he’s not. Not really. Not anymore. 

And the difficult thing is that he wants that. He wants them to treat him the same as they always have, in some ways at least. He wants Aunt Diane to still invite him to her cottage every year for Canada Day weekend. He wants friends to still stop him in the canned goods aisle and spend fifteen minutes catching up. He wants the same love that they’ve all always shown him, just not the expectations to be someone he’s not anymore. And he doesn’t know if there’s a way that he can have both.

Caught up in all these remnants of his past, Patrick is suddenly struck by how much he misses his present. He misses Schitt’s Creek. He misses the store. He misses David. Before he can think better of it, he grabs his phone from the nightstand and sends off a text.

_Patrick:_ Store still standing?

The thought of David’s grumbly outrage keeps a smile on Patrick’s face until the response comes, and then it only grows wider.

_David:_ I do know how to look after our business you know.

_Our_ business. It’s a simple fact, but Patrick never gets tired of the reminder that he and David have built something together.

_David:_ Though I do have to burn the building down now because Roland TOOK OFF HIS SHOE to ask if I thought the foot cream would help with his bunion.  
  
_David:_ I can’t believe you abandoned me to deal with a crisis like this on my own.

The laugh that startles out of him is loud enough that he claps a hand over his mouth to muffle the sound. It’s a very David problem, and god, Patrick misses him.

_Patrick:_ As tempting as it is, I don’t think arson is our best business strategy.  
  
_David:_ Fine. But you’re helping me disinfect the entire sales floor when you get home.

Home. 

It might be the first time anyone has ever referred to Schitt’s Creek as his home, and Patrick gets a little thrill at the thought of it. Because even though Evergreen Hollow will always be where he’s from, Schitt’s Creek is the place where he’s taken the first real risk of his life, accepting a job and a room sight unseen from a friendly, chatty voice on the other end of the phone. It’s where he’s chosen for the first time to invest himself in something because he really wanted it and not because he thought he was supposed to. Where he’s first let himself look and consider and start to reach for what he’s been telling himself for years he was never going to have. Where, maybe, for the first time in as long as he can remember, he’s happy—truly happy—just being who he is.

Maybe that is home after all.

He wants that feeling—that happiness—here in Evergreen Hollow. He wants to find a way to close the distance between the two points on the map, to string together the Patrick of then and the Patrick of now into one complete person. He wants it so badly that he manages to find the courage to type out the next question despite his shaking fingers.

_Patrick:_ How did you come out to your family?

Three dots appear and disappear, again and again, and Patrick can practically feel David’s confusion at the non sequitur through the screen.

_David:_ I brought a couple home with me one day in college and told my parents to deal with it.

Patrick nearly laughs. If only it were that easy. If only he could show up with David on his arm and tell his parents, “This is my boyfriend, and I’ve never been happier in my life.” 

Having David at his side would certainly make him feel a bit braver, a bit less alone. Of course, the hitch in that idea is that coming out to his family is supposed to be the catalyst to asking David out. That’s another reason he’d come back. 

At first, he’d been afraid to ask David out, never quite getting up the nerve or finding the right opportunity. There’d been a moment where he’d nearly done it, back in July for David’s birthday, but he’d hesitated a little too long and the moment had passed. He’d told himself after that he hadn’t done it because he was afraid of messing up their business partnership. Really, he’d been afraid of finding out that he didn’t mean to David what David had come to mean to him. 

But as they’ve gotten to know each other more these last few months, Patrick has become less and less afraid. He’s actually pretty sure now that there’s something happening between them, that there’s a connection—a spark, if he wants to be cliché. He can feel it when they catch each other’s eye across the store and a smile flickers onto David’s face, or when they bump into each other in the stockroom, choking out soft, sticky apologies. It’s there, Patrick’s sure, and it’s as much the reason he’s come home as anything else. 

Because the more that he’s gotten to know David and the more Patrick’s learned about his past, the more he’s convinced that he needs to come out before he can allow himself to tell David how he feels. David deserves someone as bold as he is. He deserves someone who isn’t going to hide him away, again, like a secret shame. He deserves someone who can love him openly, without reservation, without a single second of hesitation, and Patrick desperately wants to be that person. So he had convinced himself on a late autumn hike that if he can come out to his parents, then he can ask David out on a date as soon as he gets back to Schitt’s Creek.

He hadn’t planned for what would happen if he can’t actually tell them after all. 

Before he can spiral too far about it, his phone chimes with another message.

_David:_ Can I ask why you’re asking?

There’s a part of him that knew the question was coming. There might even be a part of him that wanted it, but it does nothing to quell the anxiety that churns up in his belly once again. Patrick closes his eyes and counts out ten long breaths, in and back out again. 

David is the person most likely to be low key about the whole thing. It won’t matter to him, Patrick reminds himself. He doesn’t know _old Patrick,_ so Patrick isn’t destroying a lifetime of expectations by telling him. It changes nothing about their business partnership, and David himself is queer, too. If Patrick can’t even tell him, how will he ever manage to tell his parents?

Still, it takes him six minutes to convince himself to type out the response, and he has to sit on the side of his bed with his head between his trembling knees and breathe for several more before he can finally hit send.

_Patrick:_ I’m gay

His phone rings almost immediately, and he drops it on the floor in his surprise, scrambling to retrieve it from where it bounces under the bed before it can wake everyone else in the house.

“H-hello?”

“Thank you,” David says, his voice soft and familiar and exactly what Patrick needs, “for trusting me. With that.”

The knots in his stomach ease all at once, a steady, soothing warmth rushing in as the tension bleeds away. He could laugh at how much better he suddenly feels. David knows. _Someone_ knows. He’s said the words, and the world didn’t end. “You’re the, uh, the first person I’ve told.”

“Oh. That’s— Oh.”

It’s hard to parse the exact tone of the reply, but Patrick thinks that maybe David sounds pleased, just a little, like he’s happy to be the one Patrick has chosen to share this with. The warmth in his stomach floods up into his chest, and he takes what feels like the first deep breath of his entire life. 

“It’s what I really came home to do,” he admits, tucking the phone closer to his ear, as if it will physically bring him closer to David somehow. “I wanted— I’m _going_ to tell my parents. I was planning to tell them as soon as I got here, but it was— I just couldn’t. I still don’t, uh, I don’t really know what I’m doing.”

“No one does,” David says, more gentle than Patrick’s ever heard him. “But it, um, helps—sometimes—to tell a friend first. Kind of like… practice.”

“Well I told you.”

“Oh,” David says again, and Patrick’s heart clenches at the surprised sound of it. “I just, I meant like… an old friend. Someone you, you know, care about. Someone that matters.”

 _You matter,_ Patrick thinks so loudly he’s afraid David might somehow hear it over the phone. 

“Maybe someone you can bring for support, when you tell your parents.”

“I don’t really have many friends like that,” he says with a frown. “Not anymore.” Over the years, his high school friends have drifted away into marriages and families and faraway jobs. Most of his college friends had been close to Rachel too and had taken her side in one break-up or another, and he’d lost touch with the few that remained when he’d blown up his entire life eight months ago. “Maybe I can get ahold of one of my cousins or something,” he says, not really willing to admit that David’s pretty much his only friend these days. He’s already given in to enough honesty for one night. “Anyway. It’s late, and I don’t want to keep you.”

“Oh, okay. If you’re— If you don’t need anything else.”

As much as he’d stay on the phone all night if David wanted, he really doesn’t have a good excuse to keep him on the line any longer. “No, I’m… Thank you. For the advice.”

“Any time.”

“Goodnight, David.”

“Goodnight, Patrick.”

He collapses back into bed, breathing deeply now that some of the weight has been lifted off his chest. Sleep finds him more easily than it has all week.

❄️ **December 30** ❄️

The Burning Festival has been a tradition for longer than Patrick’s been alive, and he’s only missed it a few times, once, in college when he broke his leg falling off a ladder, and a couple years when he and Rachel opted to spend the holidays vacationing with her family instead. It’s one of those familiar pieces of the holidays that he doesn’t realize how much he looks forward to until he’s in the middle of it, even this year when everything else about being home is making him a little uneasy. He likes the lights and the people, the atmosphere of friendly holiday cheer, the booths of local wares and festive foods sprawling well out from the square. And there’s the bonfire, of course—the burning part of the Burning Festival—which is as much a part of New Year’s Eve tradition here as champagne and midnight kisses.

The footprint of the festival seems to grow every year, and Patrick quickly loses his parents in the rush and heave of the crowd. They probably saw someone they know—an old high school classmate or a former coworker or a friend of a friend of a friend—and they just had to say hello. 

Schitt’s Creek reminds him of this place in that way. Everyone knows practically everyone, or at least knows someone who knows someone who knows you, and they treat you like family or long lost friends all the same, like there’s some kind of special kindness shared secretly amongst small towns. Maybe that’s part of what drew him to Schitt’s Creek in the first place.

As he passes by the bandstand where a crew is setting up for some local group to perform later tonight, his phone buzzes in his pocket. 

_David:_ Where are you?  
  
_Patrick:_ In Evergreen Hollow?  
  
_Patrick:_ The same place I’ve been all week.

He must be getting high with Stevie if he’s forgotten something that simple. Patrick only hopes they aren’t smoking out behind the store again; last time Stevie left the door open, leaving the stockroom smelling faintly skunky, and David vociferously refused to talk to her for an entire week.

_David:_ But like WHERE where? At your parents’ house?

Patrick squints at the screen, trying to make the letters take some other shape than that of the words he thinks he just read. But even though he blinks and blinks, David’s questions remain the same.

_Patrick:_ No. There’s this annual festival on the square.  
  
_Patrick:_ Why?  
  
_David:_ Are you gonna be there a while?  
  
_Patrick:_ Yeah, probably. Why?  
  
_Patrick:_ David?  
  
_Patrick:_ ???

After several minutes, there’s still no response, and Patrick has no choice but to slip his phone back into his pocket, and try not to wonder what would make David so curious about where he is. Luckily, he hears his name from across the street and finds Nathan waving at him from the table where his wife Holly is selling handmade wreaths, and it’s easy to lose himself in catching up on what they’ve been up to instead.

By the time they send him off again with a round of hugs, it’s started to snow, heavy, wet flakes that stick to Patrick’s hat and his coat, and he makes his way to a booth that’s selling homemade hot chocolate, ladled out of crock pots into little paper cups and offered up with your choice of toppings. With as cold as it is tonight, they seem to be making a killing, and he has to join the line behind at least twenty other people already waiting.

His phone buzzes again.

_David:_ Where are you now?  
  
_Patrick:_ Still at the festival.  
  
_David:_ Okay but like where at the festival?  
  
_Patrick:_ Why does it matter?  
  
_David:_ Just humor me. Please.

Patrick contemplates sending back a selfie where he’s flipping David off, but it would really require taking off his glove for the desired effect, and it’s way too cold for that. Instead he just shakes his head and answers the question anyway.

_Patrick:_ In line for hot chocolate.  
  
_Patrick:_ Will you tell me what’s going on now?  
  
_Patrick:_ Is everything okay?

Like before, he stares at his phone until it goes dark, but there’s no response, nor an indication that David is even typing one. With a sigh, he pockets his phone again and steps up to order.

“Hi, can I get a hot chocolate please? With whipped cream, no marshmallows.”

“Make that two please,” comes a familiar voice from beside him, and Patrick nearly falls over at the sound of it.

 _This is a dream_ , he tells himself. _This must be a dream._

David.

David is here. 

Here in Evergreen Hollow. 

Standing beside Patrick in line for hot chocolate, long and lithe, with snow gathering in his perfect swoop of dark hair and along the shoulders of his high-collared, asymmetrical coat, the lights strung up through the square sparkling in his eyes as he gives Patrick a shy sliver of a smile. 

He’s so achingly gorgeous and entirely unexpected that he can’t possibly actually be real. Patrick’s imagination must have conjured him out of thin air, and he just barely manages to keep himself from jabbing a finger into David’s side to check that he’s made of something solid.

“What are you doing here?” Patrick asks, still breathless with surprise.

The corners of David’s mouth twitch a little higher. “You sounded like you could use a friend.”

If it were possible to spontaneously melt, Patrick’s pretty sure he’d be a puddle on the ground right now. 

When David turns away to hand some cash to the woman behind the table, he takes the moment to put himself back together. She passes them two steaming cups of hot chocolate, piled high with whipped cream, and it’s the heat of it bleeding through his glove that reassures him that yes, somehow, this is indeed real. David is really here in Patrick’s hometown, all because he had said he didn’t have anyone else to support him through this. Maybe he’s not going to melt after all; maybe he’s going to cry. 

Either way he manages to hold himself together and lead the way into the heated tent that serves as dining space and over to a tall table in a corner, looking back at David every few seconds like he still might disappear, and eventually he has to ask. “Are you really here?”

David huffs out a laugh. “What else would explain this?”

“I don’t know. Hologram. Elaborate costume. I’ve slipped into a coma, and my brain is slowly dying.”

“Wow, that got dark. Is it really that hard to believe I’m here?”

“Honestly? Yes.” It’s not that Patrick doesn’t think David is the kind of person who would do this. He knows better than almost anyone just how good of a person David is at heart. He sees it every day in the way he interacts with their vendors and their customers, in the little things he does for Jocelyn and Twyla and Ronnie even when he rolls his eyes at all of it. But it’s one thing to agree to help string up some decorations in Jocelyn’s living room for her baby shower and a whole other thing entirely to drive five hours just because your business partner is having trouble coming out to his parents. It’s the kind of thing David would do without hesitation for his sister or his parents or even Stevie, but Patrick’s having a hard time believing that he’s worth the same kind of trouble. “How did you even get here?”

David takes a careful little sip of his cocoa, eyes briefly slipping closed at the pleasure of it.

“I talked Stevie into letting me borrow her car, and Alexis agreed to watch the store for the rest of the afternoon so that I could get on the road.”

A mouthful of whipped cream goes straight down Patrick’s windpipe, sending him sputtering and coughing. “Wow. You left Alexis in charge?” he chokes out when he can manage it.

“Why, do you think it was a mistake?” David’s voice rises with immediate alarm. “I mean _I_ thought it was a mistake, but that’s just because I’m… me. But if _you_ think it’s a mistake, too, oh god—”

“No. No, I’m sure it’s fine, David.” Patrick tries his hardest not to smile at David’s predictable panic, though he isn’t entirely successful. “I’m just having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of you trusting _anyone_ enough to leave them alone in the store. You called me every half hour the first time you went on a vendor run during business hours.”

“It was only our second week!” he protests. “And isn’t that, like, a thing? Where parents get nervous to leave their kids with a babysitter for the first time or whatever?”

“So I’m just the babysitter then,” Patrick teases, taking a much more careful sip of his drink this time.

“No! I’m just saying— _Anyway._ I don’t trust Alexis, but…” David trails off, getting caught up picking at a splinter sticking up from the edge of the tabletop before he finally looks carefully up at Patrick again, his big brown eyes full of cautious sincerity. “I thought maybe I needed to be here more.”

If Patrick were a braver man, he’d lean across the table and kiss David right here and now. But that’s the crux of all of this, isn’t it—he isn’t a braver man. He hasn’t found the courage to come out to his parents. He hasn’t boldly proved himself worthy of someone as good as David Rose. But David is here anyway, to help him be brave, simply because Patrick had said he didn’t have anyone else who could.

It is genuinely the kindest thing anyone has ever done for him, and Patrick might actually cry after all. “Thank you, David,” he says, his voice thick with emotion. Before he can talk himself out of it, he steps closer and pulls David into a hug, breathing in the familiar scent of him and letting it calm some of the nerves jittering in his stomach. David’s arms come up to wrap around his back, and Patrick lets himself sink into the feeling of being held for a moment before he finally steps away again.

“So,” David says, fidgeting with his cup. “Is there, like, food at this thing? I drove straight through, so I haven’t really had dinner.”

David forgoing food for his sake is almost a bigger gesture than being here in the first place, so once they finish their hot chocolates, Patrick hurries to lead him back out to the row of trucks and carts preparing all kinds of treats, steam curling into the night above them, filling the air with scents both sweet and savory. He insists on paying when David decides on a plate of pierogi and, when he’s done with that, a box of tiny, freshly fried donuts. When David offers him one, Patrick tucks his gloves into his pocket and lets the cinnamon sugar coat his fingers in gritty sweetness. They share the rest, passing the box back and forth between them as they make their way back around to the booths selling locally made goods. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” David asks eventually.

“No,” Patrick answers before he can even think about it, his stomach starting to churn nervously at the mere thought. “Yes,” he tries anyway and then sighs. “I don’t know.”

They stop at a table where students from the high school are selling their art. To Patrick, they mostly look like misproportioned still lifes and unrealistic landscapes, but David examines the canvases carefully, as if each one were a potential Monet or a Chagall, like maybe there’s beauty to be found if you look close enough. 

“You know you don’t have to tell anyone if you aren’t ready, right?” David says as he tilts his head to get a different angle on a series of lines that almost look a little like the abstract concept of a mountain, if Patrick squints. “It’s something you should only do on your own terms.”

“No, I know.” Patrick digs his hands deep into his coat pockets, curling and uncurling his gloves between his fingers. How can he possibly explain why it’s so important for him to tell his parents now? He can’t admit that he has to tell them so that he’ll finally feel like he can ask David on a date. He can’t tell him that he can’t imagine waiting weeks or months or god forbid years longer before he can reach for what he wants. “It’s just that—”

“Oh, Patrick, there you are!” 

He startles at the sound of his father’s voice, calling from in front of the next booth down, where his mother is buying an armful of candles. He’d all but forgotten that his parents were here, and now here he is with David and, well, it’s not like they’ve been found in a compromising position or anything—though that certainly would be one way to break the news, he supposes—but Patrick still feels a bit like he’s been caught out and tries to will away the blush that springs to his cheeks.

“David,” he says as his parents join them, “these are my parents, Clint and Marcy. Mom, Dad, this is David. My business partner.” 

His mom’s eyes widen briefly in surprise, but she turns quickly to David with a welcoming smile. “It’s so nice to finally meet you, David!”

“You, too, Mrs. Brewer,” he says, politely. “And Mr. Brewer.”

They all shake hands and step farther out of the way of someone trying to actually buy one of the student paintings. 

“What brings you to Evergreen Hollow, David?” Patrick’s dad asks.

“Oh, um, I invited him,” Patrick covers quickly. “For the festival. Sorry, I guess I forgot to mention it.”

“Well the more the merrier,” he replies, and if he thinks there’s anything unusual about his son inviting his business partner for a small town festival hours away from where they both live, he doesn’t show it. 

They bustle along from booth to booth, with his mom peppering David with questions about the store and Schitt’s Creek and the Roses, and his dad interjecting whenever they hit on something Patrick’s mentioned to them before. It’s easy to imagine things being exactly like this, his parents welcoming David into the family as his boyfriend or maybe even their son-in-law, and Patrick has to stop for a moment and breathe through the complicated knot of hope and fear and bittersweet want that tightens around his windpipe. 

“So where are you staying, David?” his father asks. “Not the Golden Star I hope.” His mother laughs at the old family joke about the dilapidated roadside motel out on the highway.

“Oh, um, I haven’t actually booked anything yet.” He looks over to Patrick as he says it, clearly trying to let him take the lead here, as if he thinks it’s even remotely possible that Patrick might not want him to stay. There’s no way he’d let David make the drive back to Schitt’s Creek this late even if he didn’t want him here. But he does. As surprising as David’s appearance had been, Patrick can’t imagine doing this without him here now.

“He can stay in my room,” he offers, going pink again when he realizes the implications. “I mean, everywhere will be booked up,with the holidays and the festival, so he can— You can stay with us,” he says directly to David. “I can sleep on the sofa bed.”

“Nononono, I can’t kick you out of your own room!” David shakes his head with a vehemence usually reserved for children left to their own devices in their store. “The sofa bed is fine. It’ll still be better than the motel.”

Patrick’s parents chuckle, his dad replying, “Maybe not much better.”

“We usually put Clint’s mother on it when she visits,” his mom whispers conspiratorially, and David grimaces.

“I think you’re really selling him on it, Mom. Do you want to tell him, too, about how the pillowcases are actually full of rocks and the sheets are one hundred percent polyester?” He flashes David a teasing grin as she shakes her head.

“Hush, you,” she admonishes before turning back to David. “Don’t listen to him.”

“I rarely do.”

“Hey!” Patrick objects as both his parents laugh.

“Oh, I like you,” his dad says, and that knot in Patrick’s chest grows a little bigger, a little tighter. _It could be like this_ , he chastises himself. _It could be like this if you could just tell them, all three of them. Tell them who you are. Tell them what you want._

“We’ll set you up nice,” his mom tells David, emphasized with a pointed look at Patrick. “I’ve got down pillows, and you can have the regular cotton sheets or flannel ones, whichever you’d prefer. And we just bought a new memory foam mattress pad we can put on. It’ll practically be like staying at the Ritz.”

“Well, I’ve stayed at the Ritz,” David tells her, “and this already sounds much better.”

Patrick’s mother’s smile is so warm and fond, so completely charmed, and he can feel the look mirrored on his own face. This is precisely how he fell for this man. He’s quick and funny and sharp and particular and so, so generously good, often all of those things and more in the span of a single conversation, and Patrick wants to spend years, maybe a lifetime, discovering all the other things that David can be. 

“I’m so glad you’re here, David,” his mom says, and David gives her one of his real smiles in return.

“I’m glad Patrick invited me.” He catches Patrick’s eye then, his smile growing softer, though Patrick’s heart pounds harder in response. He gets caught in the moment, everything else fading out at the edges for a few heartbeats before David finally looks away.

“Ooh, is that kirie?” he asks, lighting up at what seems to be a booth full of some kind of paper art. “I’ll be right back!”

As soon as he’s out of earshot, Patrick’s mother turns to him. “Patrick, he’s wonderful.”

“Yeah, he’s pretty great,” he agrees, realizing as he says it just how fond he sounds. But he can’t really help it; he is fond. Still, he’s not quite ready yet to admit to his parents just how deep it runs. “I mean, we make a good team, I think. At the store.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell us he was coming!”

“Sorry, it was… really last minute. I didn’t know for sure if he was going to show up.”

“Well, I’m glad he did. But if I’d known he was coming… oh, I just hope we have some of the good towels clean.” Patrick rolls his eyes as she starts digging in her purse, the bag of candles swinging dangerously in the crook of her elbow until his dad hands her a set of keys.

“Marcy, he isn’t the Prime Minister.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure he’ll deign to use regular towels like the rest of us peasants.”

She waves a dismissive hand at them both and then gives Patrick’s arm a squeeze. “You boys stay out as long as you like. We’ll head back and make up the living room for him.”

“Thanks, Mom.” 

Once they’re gone, he allows himself a deep breath and turns to find David in animated conversation with the man running the booth, which as Patrick gets nearer he realizes is covered in intricate, delicate papercuttings—flowers and fish and butterflies and snowflakes. They’re beautiful but fragile and clearly labor intensive. Expensive, too, he’s sure, as they should be for the time they must take to complete. The man is holding onto what appears to be one of their Rose Apothecary business cards as David gives him a brief rundown of their business model, and Patrick takes the moment to appreciate him so fully in his element. He knows that David doesn’t really think of himself as a people person, but he’s so good with their vendors, their potential vendors, their customers, everyone really. He can be so charming when he wants to be and isn’t afraid to be effusive about things he likes, and it makes him excellent at his job. Patrick still finds himself a little awed and a little jealous at how easily that kind of passion and praise comes to David. He’s spent so much of his own life pushing down the things he wants in order to do what’s responsible, what’s expected, that he doesn’t think any of that will ever come as easy to him as it seems to David. But he wants to try.

“That’s some of the best work I’ve seen outside of Tokyo. He said he’d send us some pricing info,” David says as they step away and he passes the vendor’s business card over to Patrick. “I told him I’d make sure my business partner takes a look at it, and we’ll let him know if we want to do a trial run.” He takes one last wistful look at the booth before they wander on down the row, and Patrick knows that they’ll definitely be doing more than a trial run. There probably isn’t a huge market for papercuttings in Schitt’s Creek, but they can always stock them just a few at a time. Patrick trusts David’s tastes and has seen him talk customers into far more unlikely purchases, but more than that, having them in the store would clearly make David happy. How can Patrick even consider saying no to that?

They make their way through the remaining vendors, David stopping to converse with two more and coming away with more business cards for Patrick to tuck into his wallet. By the time they make it to the last stall, it’s snowing more steadily, and the wind keeps kicking it straight at them in icy gusts, and David shivers silently each time, wrapped in only his coat, the collar turned up against the cold. Only David would come to an outdoor festival in the heart of winter without gloves or a hat or anything else to keep him any warmer. Patrick contemplates offering up his own thick, knitted scarf—he even lets himself get lost in the romcom fantasy of it for a moment, in the thought of reaching up to tenderly wrap it around David’s neck, the proximity lending itself to a quiet, drawn out moment of longing between them, before one of them finally leans in, lips meeting lips, the night fading away entirely as they—

“You know,” David says, interrupting his daydream, “this kind of reminds me of the Christmas market in Vienna we went to the year Mom was filming _Snow Business Like Show Business._ ” That’s not one Patrick’s familiar with, and David explains, “It was a mash-up of _Annie Get Your Gun_ and _The Snow Queen_ , which works about as well as you’d expect. Anyway, Alexis snuck off, and they didn’t notice for ages. I finally found her on the carousel, having sweet-talked the woman running it into letting her ride for free.”

“How old was she?”

“Six maybe?” 

Nearly every story about David and Alexis’s childhood makes Patrick ache for them, but they both treat the anecdotes so casually it’s hard to respond to them with the seriousness they deserve. He opts for a different tack. “So then that would have made you…”

“A little older than her,” David says with a knowing grin.

“Worth a shot,” he replies with a shrug. “Someday you’re gonna slip up and actually tell me how old you are.”

“Not a chance.” The wind whips up around them again and sets David shivering once more. “Too bad there’s no glühwein though,” he laments.

“Want me to buy you another hot chocolate to make up for it?”

“Ooh, yes, please.”

With fresh cups in hand, they make their way to a bench facing the pile of wood that’s been strategically stacked for tomorrow night’s bonfire.

“So what is this festival anyway?” David asks.

“The Burning Festival. It supposedly started as a way for people to try to sell things they didn’t need anymore. Anything they didn’t sell, they threw into a fire, ridding themselves of it one way or another before the start of the new year.”

“They’re not going to burn all this stuff, are they?” David says, looking around in a sudden panic like any second now someone might strike up a match and reduce the booths all around them to cinders.

Patrick laughs lightly. “No, now it’s a little more figurative. We write down the things we want to leave behind and put them in one of those boxes over there”—he points to where several simple pine boxes sit on a table beside the fence around the bonfire—”and then they put them into the base of the fire before they light it tomorrow night.”

“I like that,” David says. “There are a lot of places that burn an effigy of winter to celebrate the coming of spring, but this is more… personal.” He shivers once more, and this time Patrick unwinds his own scarf before he can get caught up fantasizing about it again, ignoring David’s protests that he doesn’t have to. 

“If you’d dress appropriately for the weather…”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought I was going to meet you at your house. I didn’t know we were going to be spending so much time outside! I’ll be sure to bring a full winter ensemble next year.”

Next year. Patrick tries and fails not to smile at the thought. David is certainly just joking, but it would be nice having him here on purpose next time. He loops the scarf carefully around his neck, concentrating on his hands and not David’s smirking mouth so temptingly close.

“There,” he says, sitting back again and pulling his own hat farther down over his ears. “Better?”

“You didn’t have to, but yes. Thank you.”

“No,” Patrick says. “Thank you. For coming here. It means a lot.”

David shrugs. “It was nothing.”

“David, this is not nothing.” There’s a sparkling, breathless half second where Patrick nearly leans in again, caught up in the stubbled line of his jaw and the frozen flush of his cheeks, the snowflakes glittering in his eyelashes and in his hair and on Patrick’s scarf around his neck. He looks like Christmas morning, like everything Patrick’s ever wanted wrapped up in one beautiful package. 

“Have you done yours yet?” David asks, and Patrick shakes his head, both in reply and to clear away the lingering vision of kissing David right here in the town square. “Come on then.” He stands and offers out his hand to pull Patrick to his feet. “I’ll do one, too.”

Patrick leads them to the table, which is adorned with a sign that says _leave it behind._ There are pens scattered around and slips of paper cut into the shape of maple leaves, and David rolls his eyes. “Something tells me Ted would love this.”

They fill out their leaves side by side. Patrick’s known all week what he’s planned to write and scrawls the single word across the paper before folding it and dropping it into one of the boxes. David takes a little longer, contemplating it for a minute before carefully writing something on the paper leaf and sliding it into the nearest box.

With nothing else really left to do, they wander toward the exit. “Is it like a wish,” David asks, “and if you tell people it won’t come true?”

“I don’t think so. But people usually don’t say anyway. It’s just…” 

“Personal.”

“Yeah.” 

At the far edge of the festival, Patrick stops to drain the dregs of his hot chocolate and throw away his cup, lingering at the perimeter rather than heading for the lot where he’d parked his car. He knows David is coming back to the house, but it almost feels like there’s something magic here that will be broken once they leave. It almost feels like a date, and he’s not ready to say goodnight just yet.

David, for his part, doesn’t seem in any rush to leave either. “So they light the fire tomorrow night?” He pulls the scarf tighter around his neck, and Patrick grins.

“Yeah. Ten o’clock.”

“Wait. It’s not even a midnight thing?”

He laughs at David’s affront. “Yeah, they say it’s because they want to make sure everyone’s leaves actually burn up before the new year starts, but probably someone just decided one year that they didn’t want to be here all night.”

“Do you, like, come back to watch it?”

“Usually.” They lapse into silence, and Patrick watches the snow dance in the rings of light cast by the street lamps. David does, too, though he keeps throwing Patrick sideways little looks, until he finally puts together what he’s waiting for. “Um, you can stay. If you want. Tomorrow night, I mean. So that you can come back for the bonfire with us.”

David makes a show of objecting. “I don’t want to be an imposition.”

“You’re not,” Patrick says, meaning it with every ounce of sincerity he has.

“Then… yes. I’d like that.”

“Me, too.” They shuffle their feet for another few moments, but now there really is no excuse to stay. “Well, I’ll— I’ll see you at the house.” It comes out more like a question than he intends, and David is quick to reply.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yes.”

If this were actually a date, Patrick thinks, this is definitely where he’d lean in and kiss him. He doesn’t. But he does give David another hug, quick but tight, trying to push all his affection and appreciation out through his hands and into David by osmosis. 

“Okay,” he says when they part. “See you in a minute.”

“I’ll be right behind you.”

❄️❄️❄️

Patrick lingers in the doorway between the living room and the hall. He finds he’s been doing that a lot tonight: lingering. He’d never really pictured David here in Evergreen Hollow, here in his parents’ house, and he wants to take the time to make each moment solid, an indelible impression in his memory. And this one, with the honeyed glow of the Christmas tree lights spilling gently over the darkened room, David tucked beneath flannel sheets and his grandmother’s quilt on the sofa sleeper where he’s scrolling something on his phone, is certainly another moment that Patrick wants to keep. David looks cozy and comfortable, like he belongs here, and Patrick desperately wants him to.

He puts his phone down when he catches Patrick looking. “I guess we didn’t really talk much about… you know,” he says, and it sounds like an apology.

“It’s fine,” Patrick replies, though his stomach twists at the reminder of why David’s really here. He doesn’t know what else to say about it now though, not here where someone could come down for a glass of water or to sneak another slice of pie and overhear them.

David seems to understand his hesitation. “Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” he agrees. Maybe they can go to the coffee shop around the corner or just for a drive around town. Anywhere with more privacy so that Patrick can figure out how to get the words to finally fall out of his mouth.

“Okay. Goodnight, Patrick.”

“Goodnight.” Patrick turns off the Christmas tree lights, plunging them both into darkness. Once his eyes adjust to the moonlight coming in through the windows, he starts up the stairs, but halfway up, he turns around and trails back down a few steps, the dark making him a little bolder. 

“David?” 

“Yeah?”

There are a million things he wants to say, all of them feeling more possible here under the cover of night. But what he finally says is, “I’m really glad you’re here.”

He can just make out the tilted curve of David’s lips in the dark.

“Me, too.”

❄️ **December 31** ❄️

“Your mom wants us to go ice skating today,” David says as Patrick ambles into the kitchen, freshly showered, his nerves already sparking at the thought of what he’s going to have to find a way to do today.

“Oh, we don’t have to do that.”

“She said it’s a tradition.” David says it like that settles the matter, but this is a tradition Patrick’s been skipping out on for pretty much his whole life.

“Yeah, kind of. But I don’t—” He shakes his head and swallows down the fresh way of nauseous unease that rises in his throat. “I’ll talk to her.”

“It’s fine.”

“No, really, I’ll—”

“Patrick, it’s fine,” David insists. “I’d have packed different sweaters if I’d known we’d be spending so much time outdoors, but it’s fine. I told her we’d be happy to go.”

 _We’d be happy to go._ We. The thought of David speaking for both of them should be irritating; it’s definitely the kind of thing that used to drive him a little crazy when Rachel did it, but instead it just warms Patrick from the inside, more thoroughly than the cup of tea he’s making for himself possibly can. So he lets it go. David probably won’t want to actually skate anyway. They’ll go along to make his mom happy and just hang out inside where it’s warm and safe and no one has to embarrass themselves. 

It’s fine.

It’s not fine.

It’s not fine because not only does David _want_ to skate, but also David apparently knows _how_ to skate. Really knows. He can skate backwards and do a couple quick little turns. It’s nothing particularly fancy, Patrick supposes, but it’s far more than he would have expected of someone who claims to have never done anything remotely athletic in his life. 

“Did you forget to tell me you used to be a pro figure skater or something?” he asks as he takes his time tightening and retying the laces on his skates from a bench beside the frozen pond. He’s not stalling, exactly, but if it keeps him from the ice longer, so be it.

“Not a pro,” David says as he pushes himself a few feet away and circles back again, fidgeting with the hat Patrick let him borrow to pull it a little farther down over his ears. He’s got Patrick’s scarf again, too, and a pair of gloves they’d found tucked into one of his dad’s coats in the hall closet. It’s a cozy look, and Patrick gives himself a moment to enjoy the view before he really processes David’s answer.

“Wait, seriously?”

“Who _didn’t_ want to be Kristi Yamaguchi?” He lifts his hands in the air to punctuate the obviousness of the question and skates in another little loop, like he’s antsy to get going already. “My parents hired her old coach to teach me to skate after Kristi went pro. It didn’t last very long—gave it up when I broke my wrist instead of my nose like I was hoping—but I did at least get pretty decent at the actual skating part.”

“You… wanted to break your nose?”

“If you’d seen my old nose, you’d have wanted to break it, too.” 

Patrick doubts that, but he has more pressing concerns at the moment. Slowly, he manages to stand up, his legs shaking a little as he forces himself to balance on the thin blades. He steps carefully out onto the ice, holding his breath until he’s certain his feet aren’t immediately going to slip out from under him. 

David watches him with a strange little smile. “When you said on the way here that you don’t skate, I kinda thought you were kidding.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. You’re all… sporty.” David skates backwards for a few feet as Patrick puts all his energy into just keeping himself upright. “And, I mean, I know that hockey butts are, like, a thing.”

Wait.

Did he just—

Patrick is left staring after him as he turns and skates on ahead, wondering if he’s reading it right that David seems to have been checking out his ass or if there’s some other, more innocent explanation he’s missing.

David does a slow, lazy spin as Patrick shuffles awkwardly toward him, wiggling himself across the ice without really picking up his feet. His parents glide past, hand-in-hand and caught up in conversation, and David nods toward them. “So they didn’t strap skates onto you as a toddler or something?”

“Oh, they definitely tried.” One of his feet starts to slip, but David reaches for his arm and steadies him before he can fall. “Apparently I cried so much the first time another boy pushed me down that they never made me go back.”

David gives him a sympathetic frown. “My dad put me in little league one year.”

“I honestly can’t imagine you playing baseball.”

“‘Playing’ is a bit of a stretch. I got in the way of a _lot_ of pitches.” He shrugs at the concerned look Patrick gives him. “They let me go home early.”

Patrick does his best to keep scooting himself forward, David staying closer to his side now as they inch their way around the frozen pond. His parents lap them a few times before David and Patrick even make it to the opposite end from where they started, giving them a wave once or twice, and he blushes with embarrassment each time. The other few skaters on the pond aren’t paying him much attention, thankfully, but Patrick still feels like an idiot. David was right to expect him to be able to skate. Children can skate. This is definitely the kind of thing he should be capable of, and he hates that he’s not somehow instantly, miraculously good at it. He should have researched it before they’d come here or, really, tried harder to learn when he was a child. This has been a New Year’s Eve family tradition for most of his life, starting back on the tiny pond behind his Uncle Henry’s house. And every year he either stays home or, the few times he’s been forced to at least come along for the ride, sits inside and reads a book and lets his parents down once again.

“We can’t be everything they expect us to be, you know.”

It’s like David has opened his skull and poked right at his fears, and Patrick nearly falls again at the shock of it. But David simply reaches out and steadies him once more, like it’s the easiest thing in the world to catch him when he stumbles. 

“Here,” he says, turning around and holding out both hands for Patrick to take. “Bend your knees a little but keep your chest up.” Patrick tries his best to follow the directions and does actually find it a little easier to balance. “Now follow my feet.” David’s skates push out to the sides and back in again in little arcs, the blades never leaving the ice, and Patrick mirrors the motion as best he can, out and back in, out and back in, his skates leaving wobbly, hourglass-shaped trails in his wake. “That’s perfect,” David says. “Keep going.”

The praise for doing something so simple itches under Patrick’s skin, so he turns it into a joke. “Something tells me this isn’t an official part of a skater’s repertoire.”

“It is actually. They’re called swizzles.”

“You’re making that up.”

David gasps at the accusation. “I am not!”

They make a whole lap doing the supposedly-named swizzles, moving smoother and steadier and a tiny bit faster than the way Patrick had inched himself along before, and though he feels a touch more confident by the time they’ve made it around, he spends most of the way worrying about what’s going to happen when David inevitably lets him go. Because at some point, David’s going to expect him to keep doing this on his own, and Patrick’s going to fall.

But David doesn’t let go. He doesn’t complain. He doesn’t try to leave him behind. He holds Patrick’s hands and guides him around and around again, as slowly as Patrick needs to go, and he doesn’t let go even once.

“I don’t want everything to change,” Patrick finally admits into the quiet space above their joined hands. “I don’t want to disappoint them.”

“You won’t.” David gives him a reassuring smile that Patrick can only bear to look at for a moment before his gaze drops back to their feet.

“You can’t know that.”

“No,” David agrees. “But this morning your dad was asking me all these questions about the store and what there is to do in Schitt’s Creek. And eventually he just said, ‘Is he happy there?’” His feet move a little faster, and Patrick naturally speeds up with him, his heart pounding in his chest as they glide along. “I think that’s all they want. For you to be happy. So no, I can’t know they won’t be disappointed, but I don’t think they will.”

Maybe David’s right—Patrick knows he probably is—but he’s still afraid that everything is going to change when he says the words aloud, like some kind of storybook spell. 

“I don’t know how to say it.” He sighs. Like skating, he hates that he can’t just magically make it happen. “I tried. I really did, but it just… gets stuck. And I can’t do it.”

“Say it to me.”

“What?” 

“Say it to me.”

Patrick glances up from their feet to give David a wary look. “I’ve already said it to you.” 

“Yeah, in a text. And unless you plan on texting your parents…”

It’s an idea, Patrick thinks, though he knows it’s the cowardly way out. There’s a reason he’d come home to do it and not called them from Schitt’s Creek in the first place. He has to say it to their faces. He owes them that much. He owes himself that much.

“...you should say it. Right now.”

Patrick glances around nervously, but no one is near enough to them at the moment to overhear anything. Still, his throat goes dry just from thinking about the possibility.

“You’re thinking about it too hard,” David says, giving his fingers a squeeze. “Let’s try something else.” He brings them to a stop but still doesn’t let go. “One foot at a time now. Push down through your toes. Out to the side still, not straight back.” They try it just on one side first, Patrick propelling himself forward with his left foot over and over while his right stays firmly connected with the surface of the ice and David’s hands stay firmly locked in his. 

“What are these called?” he asks once he’s gotten the hang of the motion.

“Left swoozles.”

Patrick barks out a laugh. “They are not.”

“Excuse you, these were the signature move of Switzerland’s most famous figure skater, Arabella Swoozle, who won gold at the 1967 Winter Olympics.”

He knows what David’s trying to do, and he appreciates it, even if he’s not so sure it’s going to work. “Aren’t the Olympics only in even-numbered years?” 

“It was a special case. They postponed the skating because of, um… bad ice.” 

“Bad ice.”

“Mhmm.”

David bites down on his lips, and Patrick can only shake his head at how much he likes this absolutely ridiculous man. “So bad they postponed it three whole years.”

“Yes. That’s correct.” He nods along for a few seconds before he finally breaks, giving Patrick a dazzling grin that sends his stomach swooping down toward his toes. He is truly the most beautiful person Patrick’s ever seen, doubly so like this, pink-cheeked and laughing, and it’s a lot, having the strength of all that Davidness aimed directly his way. He can feel the heat of it rising below his skin, making him sweat beneath his coat, and drops his gaze safely back to their feet before he can do something reckless.

“What now, coach?”

“Right swoozles, obviously,” David replies, setting them both giggling again.

He practices on his right and then finally manages to string them together in order—left, right, left, right. It’s not pretty, and it’s far from perfect, but it feels like he’s really skating. 

They make it around the pond a few more times together, and then David says, “Coach Ness used to tell me, ‘If you keep thinking about falling, your body’s going to listen. So think about flying.’” He gives Patrick’s fingers a squeeze, and Patrick realizes he’s going to actually let go now. He isn’t really ready, even with the warning, and he misses the steady pressure of David’s hands in his as soon as they’re gone, but he does at least manage to stay upright on his own, which he supposes counts for something. 

David skates skillfully away, his blades smooth and quick across the ice, the steady _shush shush shush_ sound of his skates almost soothing. He does a full loop as Patrick mostly just watches, caught up in the beauty of him, his simple black jeans accentuating the long, lean lines of his legs as he propels himself confidently around the pond.

“Fly,” he says again as he skates past, and as he comes back around once more, Patrick does his best to follow, trying to make his feet move the way they’ve practiced, one pushing out to the side, then the other. He’s not as fast and nowhere near as steady, but he propels himself forward, forcing himself to only look at David, who’s now skating backwards, eyes locked on Patrick, laughing with proud delight. And the more that Patrick focuses on him, the less he thinks about falling, and the less he thinks about falling, the less it feels like he might.

When they’re away from everyone else once more, Patrick lets the words slip out, quiet as the breeze. “I’m gay.”

David beams. “Say it again.”

Another lap, and they come out a little stronger this time. “I’m gay.”

Again and again they go around, with David sometimes doing a turn or two here or there, sometimes speeding ahead and waiting for Patrick to catch up, but never truly leaving him on his own. They skate in circles until their cheeks and noses are stained red from the bitter burn of the wind on their faces, and Patrick says it again and again and again, until eventually the words glide out of him as easily as David’s skates across the ice.

“I’m gay, and I’m going to tell my parents tonight.”

The look David gives him then is unbearably tender, cracked open in a way he usually tries to hide, and Patrick wants to wrap his arms around him, to protect that soft, vulnerable look with his own soft, vulnerable body. So he does. He lets his momentum carry him right into David’s chest, intending to pull him into a hug.

Except he miscalculates his own speed and his ability to stop and his proficiency at balancing on thin metal blades, and the surprised _oof_ that punches out of David’s chest as Patrick crashes into him turns immediately to a gasp as they pitch right over onto the ice together, landing with a painful thud.

“Oh god, are you—”

“Yeah, I’m— I’m fine. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Nothing broken, I think.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“No, I should have—”

“I wasn’t trying to—”

“Yeah, no, I kinda figured,” David says, chuckling and making no move whatsoever to get up off the ice. Of course, he probably can’t, with Patrick half sprawled on top of him.

Patrick should move. He really should. David took the brunt of the fall and is probably in pain—Patrick’s fingers certainly hurt where they’re cradled around the back of David’s head, cushioning it from the ice. But he can’t quite make himself do anything. He’s stuck, caught up in the feel of David’s body against his, the way he can feel his laughter and the hitch of his breath where their chests are pressed together. David’s tongue peeks out to wet his lips, and Patrick wants to chase it. Wants it more than he’s ever wanted anything. And they’re so close. His mouth is right there, and Patrick could so easily tilt forward and press his own to it. He meets David’s gaze, and there’s still laughter sparkling there, but there’s something else too. Something Patrick knows because he can feel the pull of it inside himself, two magnets drawn together at their poles.

He leans in, slowly, just in case he’s wrong, but that something only shimmers brighter, pulls harder, so—

“Boys, are you okay?”

Patrick throws himself backwards at the sound of his mother’s approaching voice, heart pounding and limbs flailing, and he and David scramble to get up off the ice. He nearly tips right over again as soon as he’s up, and David’s hand is there to steady him once more. But as soon as he finds his balance, David pulls hastily away.

_Fuck._

“That was quite the tumble,” his father says, interrupting Patrick’s imminent guilt spiral before it can really begin.

“We’re— we’re okay, I think,” Patrick replies, risking a glance at David. _Are we okay?_ he tries to telepathize across the distance between them, but either it doesn’t translate or David is choosing not to give him any kind of response. Patrick really hopes he’s just terrible at telepathy.

“Well, of course _you’re_ okay,” his mother says. “David clearly got the worst of it with you landing on him like a sack of potatoes. Are you hurt, dear?”

“Oh, I’m used to it,” he brushes off, his hands waving awkwardly as he glides a little farther away, and Patrick’s heart sinks. This is exactly what he was trying to avoid all along. But he’d gotten caught up in the moment and completely forgotten his parents were even here. He’d forgotten that he needs to talk to them before he should even be thinking about kissing David. And he’d pushed David away the very second anyone came near, looking like he’s ashamed at even the implication that they would be together. He’s given David every reason to think that Patrick is no different than the dozens of other shitty people before him. He’s _used to it._ God, Patrick feels like an asshole.

“If you’re sure,” she tries again, and David puts on a pained smile and nods. “Well, we should probably head back soon if we’re going to all get in showers before dinner anyway.” She stays all but stuck to David’s side as they head toward the path leading back up to the converted barn that’s serving as a skating pavilion. “Now where did you learn to skate so beautifully?” she asks.

Patrick’s dad gives him a grin. “I think she’s a fan.”

 _Me, too,_ he thinks. He just hopes he hasn’t ruined his chances to tell him that.

❄️❄️❄️

He rubs a towel through his damp hair as he tries to decide what to do about David. The car ride home had been uneasily quiet, and he had hoped to grab a minute alone with him when they’d gotten back to the house. But the way that David had told him that he could take the first shower had sounded horribly like a dismissal, and Patrick hadn’t been able to bring himself to say anything other than, “Okay.” He’d spent the entire time beneath the warm stream of water trying to figure out what he can possibly say to fix it all, but he doesn’t know how to explain himself without telling David how he feels. And he can’t tell David how he feels until he talks to his parents, which leaves him right back at square one with no real solution.

He’s still trying to figure it out as he shuts off the bathroom light, hurries down the hall clutching at the towel wrapped around his waist, opens his bedroom door, and yelps in undignified surprise at the sight of David standing in his room.

“David! What the—”

“Oh! Sorry!” He blushes deeply, something Patrick’s rarely seen him do, and looks pointedly anywhere but at Patrick. “Um, I just, I wanted to— I should’ve realized that you’d be…”

It would be cute how flustered he is if Patrick didn’t know from the way his hands have retreated into his sweater sleeves and the unusually stiff way he’s pulled his shoulders back, like a soldier preparing for battle, that he’s clearly still upset about what had happened earlier. It’s a truth that becomes even clearer when David takes a deep breath and says, “I was thinking about heading home.”

“What? David, no, I—” He reaches out automatically, forgetting that his hands are all that’s really holding up his towel, but he manages to catch it before it can fall completely away. Now it’s his turn to blush, and he’s so very glad that David’s gaze is still focused on the bedspread he’s had since the eight grade and not the mottled pink blooming all the way down his neck and across his chest. “Let me, um, let me get dressed, and then we can…”

David nods and turns toward the wall, allowing Patrick a moment to close the door and pull on some sweats and a tee from his bag.

“Okay,” he says, taking a careful seat at the foot of the bed and trying to sound much steadier than he feels. If David wants to leave, it means he’s really screwed this up. He has to find a way to fix it. Now. “Can you…” He gestures to the bed beside him, turning to face David when he sits down.

“I just don’t think you really need me. Here. Anymore.”

Nothing has ever been further from the truth. Patrick aches at the very thought of David leaving, especially like this, with Patrick having made him feel unwanted when David is what he wants most. But how can he say that without really saying it? How can he get David to understand that Patrick wants him here without letting on just how much he wants him?

“You can do this now. I know you can,” David says. “I’m just going to keep making a mess of th—”

“No. David,” Patrick starts, and maybe he can’t give him the whole truth of why just yet, but he can give him some of it. “You’re right that I can do this myself. You've given me that, but I— It’s different. With you here.” He hadn’t thought about it much over the past 24 hours, but it is. It’s easier to breathe with David around. It’s easier to be. “This past week I’ve been so caught up in worrying about how I could be me, here, and not just the person everyone always thought I was. But today and last night, I didn’t even think about it. It was easy.” The crinkle between David’s brows smooths out just a little. “You’ve done so much for me these past two days, and I know I don’t really have any right to ask you for anything else, but… Stay. Please.”

“Why?” David asks, his hands writing his anxiety in the air around them. “I’m just going to fuck everything up. I’ll do something stupid again, and—”

“David, I want you here,” Patrick cuts him off. He doesn’t know what stupid thing David even thinks he’s done, but it doesn’t matter either way. “Nothing you could do is going to change that.”

The corner of David’s mouth twitches, the temptation of a smile, and Patrick knows he’s said the right thing for once.

“Besides, how am I gonna buy you more hot chocolate tonight if you’re all the way back in Schitt’s Creek?”

David laughs, finally, and Patrick is absolutely going to kiss him tonight. He’s going to tell his parents he’s gay and then he’s going to tell David how he feels and he’s going to kiss him, here in his old bedroom on his faded bedspread and out on the town square in front of the bonfire and in every other place he pleases. Assuming David wants to kiss him back, of course.

“Well,” David says, smiling softly, “who can resist an offer like that?”

❄️❄️❄️

They all spill out onto the sidewalk in front of Magdalena’s Bistro after dinner, and Patrick hangs back, catching David gently by the arm. He’s a little warm from the glass of wine he had with his risotto and a little warm from the looks he and David have been sharing across the table all night, and this just feels like the right moment. 

“I think I’m gonna do it now,” he says quietly, and David’s eyes flare wide for a moment before he nods.

“Do you want me to stay, or…”

“I do, but I think you were right earlier,” he says. “I think I can do this part on my own now, and I— I think I want to try.” 

David gives him a tiny wisp of a smile. “Okay.”

“But… don’t go far?” There’s still a lot of anxiety layered below his newfound confidence, and he feels much better at the thought of having David nearby. An emotional safety net.

“Yeah,” David agrees. “Of course I’ll be here, if that’s what you want.”

“I do.”

“Okay, well…” He glances around, his gaze finally landing on something that makes him smile wider. “I’ll just go get a start on the hot chocolate.”

Patrick shakes his head fondly.

“Um, and you know I’m going to require more when you get done, right?”

“Should I stop and get more cash?” Patrick teases.

“Might not be a bad idea. Because I’m also going to need more of those little donuts. And maybe an elephant ear.”

“Yeah, okay.” Patrick chuckles, but he sobers again quickly, his stomach fluttering now that he’s certain he’s going to do this. “I’ll come find you after?”

David nods, and he must be able to see Patrick’s flare of nerves because he leans in a little and adds even more softly, “You’re going to be fine.”

Patrick lets himself give voice to his fears one more time. “What if they don’t react the way I think they will?”

“Then I’ll be right over there,” David says, pointing toward the large open space near the bandstand. “And we’ll figure it out. But… either way, _you_ are going to be fine.”

It shouldn’t make much of a difference to know that David believes that, but somehow it does. And maybe he’s right. Maybe he won’t be fine today, but eventually, whatever happens here, Patrick is going to be fine either way.

“Okay,” Patrick says, steeling himself. “I’m gonna…”

They linger there for a moment before David gives him one more encouraging smile and heads off in search of hot chocolate, leaving Patrick with no more reason to put this off. He catches up to his parents where they’re checking out the window display at Alstead’s Books.

“Where’s David?” his mother asks immediately. Patrick is starting to get the sneaking suspicion that she likes David even more than she likes him.

“He went for a hot chocolate.” He pushes down on the quaking in his belly and says as steadily as he can, “Hey, can we go for a walk? I want to talk to you guys about something.”

The same matching, concerned looks they’d worn his first night home, watching him across the dinner table as he gave this his first stumbling go, settle back onto their faces, but his dad simply says, “Lead the way.”

Over in the bandstand, someone starts in on a shaky version of “Let It Snow” as Patrick and his parents wander down the familiar row of shops and restaurants and around to the back of the square where the vendor booths are set up on the sidewalk in front of more businesses, Kitterman’s Photo Studio and the Evergreen Community Theatre and the Candy Emporium, all these staples of his childhood. The struggle of the past week feels fresh here in the center of town, the heart of this place that made him who he is. It’s not just his memories; his whole outlook on life was shaped by this town and the people in it, and everywhere he looks he can see the person this place taught him to be.

But maybe that doesn’t mean that’s the only version of himself that he’s ever allowed to be. Maybe just because he’s changed, it doesn’t mean people won’t still see him and love him just the same.

There’s an always-crowded pet store at the end of the street that only started leasing the space two years ago when the newspaper moved to a new office park out by Loblaws. There’s a microbrewery on the corner that wasn’t even here the last time Patrick was home, and the line to get in is currently spilling out the door. There are treasured new things here right beside the old—new wrinkles and scars, the marks of new adventures etched right over old bones—and no one here loves these places any less because they’re different from what they once were. They fold them right into their new memories and new traditions, welcoming them just the same as the places they’ve always known. 

Maybe Patrick can be his own Evergreen Hollow. Maybe he can be the same beloved boy who bought his first guitar right here at Cooper’s, spying it through this very same window, but with new stories and new songs writing themselves across his skin, too. 

With David’s help these last two days, maybe he already is.

“Mom,” he says, turning away from the music shop window to look his parents in the eye. “Dad.”

They give him their full attention. He wonders for a moment what they see, if he’s still the same little Patch who skinned his knee in the driveway playing freeze tag or if they can see the new Patrick stretched over these old bones. Both, he hopes. He wants them to see both and love him either way.

“It’s nice,” he says, “being home for the holidays.”

“You know we love having you here,” his mother says eagerly, though the worry on her face pinches tighter.

“I know. But, uh, there’s a reason I came home. Another reason.” He mentally backs up a little so that he can take a running start at what he needs to say. “I moved to Schitt’s Creek to try to figure some things out. Some things about myself. Like, what I want. And why it never really worked with Rachel.” He resists the urge to stick his hands in his pockets, rubbing a gloved thumb back and forth across his palm instead. _Fly,_ he tells himself, though it’s David’s voice he hears. “And I’m sorry I had to move so far away to do that, but I feel like I know myself better now. And I-I want you to know me better, too, so I came home…” _Fly. Fly. Fly. Fly._ “...to tell you that I’m gay.”

He forces himself not to close his eyes to brace for the impact of his words, and he’s glad he does because it means he gets to watch the proud smile that blooms across his mother’s face as her eyes well up with what seem to be happy tears. “Oh, Patrick, we love you so much, you know that, right?” She doesn’t even wait for him to nod before she’s dragging him into a hug and relief washes over him, a warm wave crashing from head to toe. “Thank you for telling us.”

She squeezes him more tightly, a few happy tears of his own leaking out at the corners of his eyes. And as soon as she pulls away, his dad is reeling him in instead, patting his back the same way he always has, and more tears slip freely down Patrick’s face to soak into the shoulder of his cerulean sweater. Finally, he holds Patrick back at arm’s length and looks him in the eye to say, “I know that couldn't have been easy, and we could not possibly be more proud of you.”

There are fresh tears then and his mom hugging them both, and it takes a long few minutes for them all to compose themselves again with wet, awkward laughter and deep breaths and a pack of tissues from her purse passed around between them.

“All we want is for you to be happy,” his dad says. “And you seem happy in Schitt’s Creek.”

“I am.”

He is. He really is.

“So are you seeing anyone?” his mother asks, the same as she has nearly every time he’s talked to her on the phone since April, and it’s so wonderfully normal that Patrick nearly starts crying all over again.

“No,” he admits, trying not to blush. “Not at the moment.”

She gets that keen look in her eye, the one that used to mean Patrick was going to end up grounded before the conversation was over. “But there is someone you’re interested in.”

“Yeah,” he admits. “Maybe.” He decidedly does not look toward the bandstand to find the man he knows is waiting for him there, but it doesn’t matter because it seems she’s already put it together, her gaze swiveling toward the square. He lets himself look, too, seeking out David and finding him just where he said he’d be, with a look of displeasure on his face at the band’s attempt to play Ella Fitzgerald.

“Patrick.” He turns back to find his dad smiling. “Go get him.”

“What?”

“He’s obviously crazy about you,” his mom adds, and Patrick nearly gets whiplash looking back and forth between the two of them. He had hoped that they’d be accepting of his news, but he’d never let himself imagine that they’d be this quickly and easily on board with him dating a guy. It feels more amazing than he had thought possible.

“Honestly, I’m pretty crazy about him, too.”

“Then go tell him,” she says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. 

Maybe it is.

He resists the urge to run. Barely. It’s mostly the idea of becoming a romcom cliché that stops him—as much as David would probably love it, he would also undoubtedly tease Patrick about it for the rest of his life. Of course, Patrick would be happy to let him do it, if it means getting forever with David, but he’s trying not to jump too far ahead of himself just yet. So he walks, briskly, around the line of vendor booths and out into the square, his eyes never leaving David’s silhouette. He has to dodge the couples scattered all across the lawn in front of the bandstand, trying their best to keep time as they move together to the music. 

David’s face lights up as he catches sight of Patrick, and Patrick’s heart thumps harder against his ribs, beating out the rhythm of David’s name. 

“It went okay?” he asks as soon as Patrick is close enough to hear.

“Yeah. They were great actually.” 

David all but sags with relief. “What about you?”

“I feel amazing.” He laughs because it’s true. He feels so much better than he had imagined he would. He wants to sing or shout from the rooftops or— Or dance. He wants to dance. “Dance with me.”

“What?”

“Will you dance with me, David?” He holds out his hand. “Please.”

David’s eyebrows nearly disappear into his hairline, but there’s a hint of amusement playing on his lips. He takes the offered hand, settling his other on Patrick’s shoulder, and Patrick finds his waist, fingers brushing against the soft fabric of his sweater as he sways them gently to the worst version of “The Way You Look Tonight” he’s ever heard.

The song ends to scattered applause, but Patrick doesn’t let David go, swaying him right on through the band’s awkward banter and into the next song. [It’s one Patrick halfway recognizes](https://youtu.be/Dv1z8hjUFCY) from some old film he must have watched with his grandmother long ago. 

_One minute to midnight  
One minute to go_

David laughs, and Patrick can feel it rumbling in the tips of his fingers where they’re pressed into David’s side. “Isn’t it a little early for this? It’s, what, like 8:00? Why does this whole festival have the vibe of a one-night stand who ‘has to be to work early in the morning’?” He lifts the hand from Patrick’s shoulder to carve air quotes around the words but then slips it right back into place again, his fingers toying with Patrick’s coat collar. It feels like that’s precisely where he belongs. 

_Let's watch the old year die  
With a fond goodbye  
And our hopes as high as a kite  
How can our love go wrong  
If we start the new year right?_

_Fly,_ Patrick tells himself once more.

“I don’t know,” he says, looking up into those deep, warm eyes, glittering with golden reflections of the holiday lights stretched out like a sea of stars above them. “I think it might be right on time.” David’s eyes crinkle sweetly at the corners, and Patrick lets himself soar. “Fear,” he says quietly. “That’s what I wrote for my leaves. I don’t want to be afraid to be me. And I don’t want to be afraid to ask for what I want.”

David’s eyes track all over his face, taking in all the things Patrick is tired of holding back. Hope. Honesty. Affection. Desire. Love. He doesn’t hide any of it away, lets it burn beneath his skin, setting him aglow, and finally, finally David asks. “What do you want?” 

“You, David.” He lets the hand on David’s waist slip around to his back, pulling him in closer so that Patrick can whisper the words into the safe, secret space between them. “I just want you.”

They meet in the middle, cold lips and warm breath, with kisses smiling and gentle and sweet as hot chocolate. David’s lips are unbearably soft, and Patrick already thinks he could spend an eternity kissing them and never get enough.

“I’ve wanted to do that for so long,” he admits when they part.

“Why didn’t you?”

He holds David closer, wrapping both arms around his lower back, as David drapes himself over his shoulders. “I wanted to be bolder. For you. Because you shouldn’t be a secret.” David bites down on his lips, tilting his head back like he can’t look directly at the admissions Patrick is giving him. “You deserve someone who doesn’t have to hide you, so I promised myself I would come out to my parents before I asked you out.”

“Oh, is that what you’re doing?” David teases, but Patrick doesn’t miss the wet sheen in his eyes. “Because I don’t think I’ve heard any asking anything.”

“My sincerest apologies.” Patrick makes a show of clearing his throat. “David, will you go on a date with me?”

David gives him a coy smirk. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Patrick buries his joy in the curve of David’s shoulder, pressing it secretly into the wool of his coat. It smells like him, and Patrick breathes him in, wanting to remember everything about how David feels in his arms on what might just be the most perfect night of his life.

“Um, while we’re being honest though,” David says, and Patrick pulls back just far enough to see his face, twisted up with the discomfort of sincerity. “You don’t have to be anything but you.” His hands find Patrick’s shoulders and give them a few fluttery squeezes. “I like you. Just the way you are.”

Patrick kisses him again, slower this time, thoroughly, until they’re both smiling too hard to carry on, still swaying together as the band croons on to the song’s off-key end.

_How can our love go wrong  
If we start the new year right?_

❄️❄️❄️

Just before ten o'clock, hand in hand, they count down with the rest of the crowd, cheering as the bonfire roars to life. There are hugs from Patrick’s parents, and the band starts in on “Auld Lang Syne,” while David complains that it’s not even midnight. Patrick kisses him anyway because, for him, the new year has already begun, everything he didn’t want to take with him already left behind. He doesn’t need the stroke of twelve to start making the next 365 days the best ones he’s had yet, so he kisses the man he loves, awash in the warm, orange glow of the firelight, as a promise to himself—to both of them—to keep letting his fears go, to let them burn away and curl into smoke, lighting the way for a new and better tomorrow.

❄️ **The next December 31** ❄️

“I’m not telling you what I’m gonna write,” David says. “You’ll just tease me.”

“I would never,” Patrick replies, but he can’t keep the grin from tugging at the corners of his mouth. 

David shakes his head, mouth twisted up in fond exasperation. It’s one of Patrick’s favorite looks, and he pulls the scarf a little tighter around his boyfriend’s neck, drops a kiss to his cheek, and takes his free hand to lead him toward the table to write out their leaves for this year.

The same warm white lights as always glisten in the trees, with evening snow frosting the branches stretched across the navy night. Every surface is powdered white as thick flakes fall all around them, and the air smells like cinnamon and cloves from the festival’s new mulled wine vendor. It’s the same festival Patrick’s always loved but a little different, too. The magic is one thing that hasn’t changed though, between the winter fairytale landscape and David on his arm, and Patrick breathes a little more deeply, trying to imbue some of its frosty spell into his veins.

He takes his time writing out his leaves this year, looking over to catch David with a hand hiding his from view like they’re back in school and he’s afraid Patrick’s going to cheat on his test. He makes a show then of trying to stretch over for a peek, laughing as David squawks indignantly and moves farther down the table to finish writing. Folding up his own paper, he waits for David to tuck his leaves into the box before he takes his hand again and leads him across the square.

“But the wine is that way,” David whines, putting on his winningest pout and tilting his head back toward the other end of the line of vendor booths.

“I’ll make it up to you,” Patrick promises, giving David a wicked twitch of his brows. 

David responds with a sultry, ridiculous little shimmy that shouldn’t be sexy and yet somehow still is, and Patrick thinks he couldn’t possibly love him more than he does in this moment. But he thinks that every day, and every day he proves himself wrong. 

They make their way to a cluster of trees strung up with silver and gold ornaments glittering above their heads. With the snow and the lights, it’s picture perfect, and butterflies flutter to life in Patrick’s stomach as he comes to a stop right in the middle.

“What are we doing?” David asks, and Patrick gives him a tight smile.

“David.” He takes a deep breath and blows it slowly out again. “Last year, I was… lost. I didn’t know what I wanted. I just knew I didn’t want what I had here in Evergreen Hollow. But then I moved to Schitt’s Creek, and I found— I found you.”

David gives him the softest, most confused smile, and it only makes Patrick more certain that he wants to spend the rest of his life with this man.

“And then you came here, and you found me, too. Right when I needed you most.” He slips a hand into his pocket and clasps it around the folded paper there. “You already know this festival is about leaving things behind. Well, there’s something I don’t want to end this year without doing.”

He offers out his open palm, and David gently takes the paper from him. 

“What is this?”

“My leaves for this year.”

David unfolds it carefully, warily, and his eyes grow wider as he reads the words Patrick had written across it just a moment ago. _Not being engaged_ , it says, _to the love of my life._

Patrick’s on his knee by the time David looks up again, the box he’s had tucked away in his desk for the last three months open in his hands to display four wide, gold rings. 

“David,” he manages through the lump of emotion growing in his throat. “Will you marry me?”

“Yes!” David cries. “Oh my god, I can’t believe you’re kneeling in the dirty snow. Get up here! Yes. Yes!” He scrabbles at Patrick's shoulders until he’s back on two feet, laughing as they kiss and smile at each other stupidly and kiss some more, until finally Patrick gets the chance to slip the rings onto David's fingers and they both tear up at the sight.

The last year has brought Patrick more happiness than he could have imagined, all starting right here, where he'd chosen to stop being afraid. Where he'd chosen David. And now he's going to choose him again and again, for the rest of their lives, at this festival, at home, every single day, and he can't wait to see what other unimaginable joys it will bring.

David makes Patrick write out a second copy of his leaves so that he can keep the original, and together, they put the copy into the box before heading off across the square to meet Patrick’s parents who are waiting for them. "You know," David says, squeezing Patrick's fingers where they're threaded together and letting him feel the press of his engagement rings between them, "now I’m _definitely_ not telling you what I wrote.”

Patrick just grins, wide and amused. "That's okay. I'll get it out of you sometime. We've got the rest of our lives."

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a little bit of an ode to the small, midwestern town where I lived when I was in high school and the both fond and frustrating feelings I have whenever I go back there. The festival part is totally made up, but they do light up the town square and put on an excellent winter wine walk there instead.
> 
> The prompt for this one was _canon divergence where someone proposes to someone else in the winter, where it’s sparkly and beautiful and cozy_ , which I obviously didn't put in the notes at the beginning so as to not give away the end. I picked it because it was a nice fit for a fic I was supposed to write for an event LAST year (whoops), so thanks, anonymous prompter, for giving me the motivation to finally get it out into the world.
> 
> Thanks as always to my wonderful beta, [Claire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cromarty/works), for her help, which on this one involved a lot of listening to me whine when I should have been writing instead. That's an important job though, and I'm glad you do it so graciously. And thanks to Julie for yelling about this idea with me back when we were also yelling our way through s6 filming together and helping me land on the idea that David would be the one of them who would know how to skate. And finally, thanks to Darcy and LeighAnne for burning things with me on that trip we took to Maine, which was the initial spark of inspiration (pun fully intended) for the festival in this story.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr as [wild-aloof-rebel](http://wild-aloof-rebel.tumblr.com) (my Schitt's Creek blog) or [hudders-and-hiddles](http://hudders-and-hiddles.tumblr.com) (my main).


End file.
